Metro Finance Director Rich Riebeling said the intention would be to put the 222 Building on the market through Metro's eBid system.

Written by

Joey Garrison

The Tennessean

Metro officials are looking to sell an 1890s-era downtown Nashville building, activity that has already drawn interest from developers exploring its conversion into a boutique hotel, among other possibilities.

The city-owned building known as the 222 Building, so called for its address at 222 Third Ave. N. and home of the Metro Human Resources Department, would become surplus property under a plan Mayor Karl Dean’s administration has proposed.

Metro Finance Director Rich Riebeling said the intention would be to put the building on the market through Metro’s eBid system.

“It would probably take somewhere close to $20 million to renovate that building, and we just don’t think there’s any value for us to be in that building,” he said. “It’s served its purpose.”

The Human Resources Department, the lone Metro department operating from the building, would relocate to Parkway Towers on James Robertson Parkway, where Metro’s Public Defender Office and Justice Information Services already work.

Metro is proposing a new 10-year lease with the privately owned Parkway Towers for these departments and human resources. Both the lease and the 222 Building action cleared a procedural first of three Metro Council votes on Tuesday.

The Davidson County Property Assessor’s Office has appraised the 222 Building at $3,916,500 and the land at $1,441,000.

“I’ve had people express interest in the building,” Riebeling said. “I think it has great potential as an office, for a hotel or as a residential development, but you have to put a lot of money into it.”

On historic register

The 222 Building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, said Tim Walker, executive director of the Metro Historical Commission.

The building’s interior, however, has been gutted and altered significantly in recent decades, losing much of its historical character inside. The building was originally the home of Gray & Dudley Hardware Company during the late 19th century. It was later the home of the Metro Department of Law, among other city departments.

Brian Taylor of Karr Commercial, a real estate brokerage company that focuses on downtown, is among those who have taken an interest in the 222 Building, though the city is planning to sell the building itself instead of hiring an intermediary.

Taylor said he has found parties interested in the building, particularly boutique hotel developers. “That building lends itself to its highest and best use to a boutique hotel,” he said, declining to identify any of the suitors.

The move to sell the 222 Building comes months after the mayor’s office retreated from a land transfer with the state in which Metro would have parted ways with the former Ben West Library building, a move that was criticized. Unlike this plan, however, that one called for the old library’s demolition.